Men and making babies

A few points in response to Randy Hageman’s pious screed in last week’s Weeky News:

Men are responsible for 100% of unplanned and unwanted pregnancies. Every. Single. One. And, if they have sex 200 times in a year, they can cause 200 pregnancies, while a woman will only get pregnant once in that year, no matter how often she has sex. Yet, Hageman chose to lecture women about responsibility.

Obviously, men don’t risk pregnancy when they are irresponsible. Every time they have sex with a woman, they have chosen to risk her health, her career, her autonomy. As Hageman said, women who want to avoid pregnancy could simply choose not to have sex.

Newsflash! The same choice is available to men. If a man does not trust a woman to appropriately manage the unintended result of his choice to have sex with her, the solution is obvious: Don’t have sex with her. To do otherwise is irresponsible.

Hageman laid the responsibility for birth control failures at women’s feet, too. Somehow, he overlooked the point that birth control is not solely up to women. The men who impregnate women are at least equally accountable for birth control failures, if not more so, because it is their sperm that must be neutralized. Men who do not accept responsibility for birth control are simply irresponsible.

Hageman thought it was worth pointing out that the Constitution does not discuss abortion at all. According to his logic, American law should never consider women either, as they likewise are not mentioned in the Constitution.

Finally, Hageman seems ignorant of the Ninth Amendment: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” Last time I checked, women were people and even they enjoy unenumerated rights, no matter how much men like Hageman wish they did not.

Christine Hill

Kristi Asplund

Shelter Bay, La Conner